Moving towards an Understanding of the Role of the Inferior Fronto-Occipital Fasciculus in Language Processing

Evidence has been provided for a clear structural distinction between the dorsal and ventral portions of the inferior frontal occipital fasciculus (IFOF). As such, there is reason to propose that there might also be a functional differentiation of the dorsal and ventral components of the IFOF. Here, we explored three main hypotheses/schools of thought with regards to the functional frameworks of the dorsal and ventral components of the IFOF: (1) the phonological vs. semantic processing hypothesis, (2) the difficult vs. non-difficult task processing hypothesis and (3) the automatic vs. non-automatic processing hypothesis. Methods: Participants (N = 32) completed a series of behavioral tasks that aligned with each of the main hypotheses. Using a regression-based approach, we assessed the unique contribution of behavioral performance to dorsal and ventral IFOF white matter indicators (i.e., fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity). Results: We found significant relationships between ventral IFOF indices and orthographic awareness (p = 0.018) and accuracy (p = 0.009). Overall, our results provide converging evidence that the IFOF primarily operates as a ventral language tract in adults. Thus, the structural distinction between dorsal and ventral IFOF does not manifest as a parallel functional distinction.